Rhyming for Roses
by meterapix
Summary: [Elsanna] Anna's always wanted Elsa back in her life. Maybe some roses, a snowman, countless cups of coffee, and a whole lot of care is all she needs to mend their friendship together, and maybe bring forth something more from it. Coffee Shop AU!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Hi! Alright, just to let you know, though the first chapter may not give the impression of it, this fic will be absolutely chock full of Elsanna. I'm not even kidding when I say that. Also, I apologise for the length of the chapter; I promise the following ones won't drag on as much (I'll try to keep them at around 1,000-3,000 words). Anyhow, enjoy!

* * *

Alright, so let me get this straight; if you're for some reason inquiring about the weather in Vancouver, and somebody tells you that the weather is positively beautiful, I'm going to have to inform you that they are so, _so _wrong.

When you visualize Canada, I'm going to assume that you think of thick blankets of snow carpeting roofs in winter, and warm leaves littering the streets in autumn. But, mostly snow, right?

Well, no. There are light showers just about every day, and heavy downpours every other. If isn't raining, it might be hail. Or sleet. But mostly rain. So I, Anna, hereby conclude, with all due respect, that it rains. A lot.

Sorry if I sound like a real stinker here, (my best friend is giving me lessons on the whole 'sarcasm' and 'sass' thing) but you could probably tell that rain just doesn't do it for me. At all. It could've been sunshine and rainbows all throughout the land, but it just had to be rain, am I right? But the weather itself isn't the problem here. It's the thoughts that come along with it.

When I'm alone in my room with no company other than the cold air, and the rain pelting down outside, I think about a girl.

This girl's name is Elsa, and to say we've stuck with one name for our relationship all these years just wouldn't be fair. We're best buddies one year, distant acquaintances the next, and then, just days later, we're complete strangers.

Now before I begin rambling on about her, I just need to put it out there first that I consider myself to be pretty outgoing, what with the number of times I've ran down the school halls belting out some over-the-top song meant to be a duet. But even so, I don't really have many friends. Well, actually, I only have one: Kristoff.  
Kristoff smells of wood shavings and hay, and before we ended up friends, he was convinced that dogs were the only living things that would ever hear him out.

I'm still kind of surprised that he actually considered being my friend to be honest, because when we met, it was around the time I got braces and nobody bothered to listen to me since they had no idea what I was saying. I guess we just somehow connected over the fact that we in no way had a penchant for getting people to like us.

The great thing is that after we became friends, he soon realized that dogs weren't in fact better than people (dogs are still great, though, mind you). But enough about him! (Sorry Kris). Let's get on with Elsa.

When I met her, it was early in January, I think. I was in third grade, she was in sixth. To me, she was the big kid. The all-around perfect big kid. She was sweet, she was smart, she was proper...and boy was she _gorgeous_. She had platinum blonde hair tied up into a single braid down her back, a pair of innocent blue eyes, and the lightest dusting of freckles on her adorable little face. Sometimes when I look into the mirror, I think of her, and I feel so _ordinary. _When I stare into my reflection, I see boring red hair done into twin braids, a face positively _covered _ in freckles, and the plainest of turquoise eyes. All I can think of was how much prettier Elsa was. She was just so perfect, and even eight years later, I can't get her out of my mind.

And, okay, while I _did _ say she was perfect and all, she did have just one downfall- she was weak.

She skipped school a lot of the days because of a fever or some other commonly contracted childhood illness that somehow managed to make its way into her system. And even though she was completely unfazed by the cold (she only needed to wear a single coat during the winters, whereas I had to wear bright and unflattering sweaters over four layers of clothing), she always stayed in for snow days. I'm not saying she was weak just because of her immune system, though, because that really wasn't the case. She was always the target of verbal onslaught from the other girls in our school. They were always so jealous of her. It was almost as if picking on her was their favourite sport. Like a, "Pick-On-Elsa Olympiad" that took place pretty much every week.

I never knew about the bullying (nobody did, actually; how they managed to keep it secret is beyond me) until I accidentally kicked my ball to the back of the school building, and I caught them in the act of chastising her. It was a horrible sight. The bloody mess that happened afterwards was even worse. But the good thing was that all the blood was coming from me and the bullies, and not Elsa. It earned me about five weeks in detention, but it also earned me a new friend, and to me, that was all that mattered; I'd never had a friend before, and neither did she. Good match, huh?

We hit it off fairly quickly after that. Elsa never went outside again and instead opted to play inside the halls, but I was totally fine with that. I'd done my fair share of exploring the school when I was friendless too, so we had a lot of fun showing each other the things we'd found.

I showed her the bulletin board inside the teacher's room with all the funky little stickers, and the funny yearbook pictures hidden inside my teacher's desk drawer. I told her about how I'd talk to the portraits of past students, and I half expected her to look at me like I was completely nuts, but she didn't even flinch!

There were times when we'd steal the blankets from the Kindergarten classes, wrap ourselves in them, and race around the halls. There were times when we'd stay at the windowsill in her classroom, hugging each other tightly as we watched the kids outside play. There were times when we'd just good off and make squishy faces at each other.

Elsa was always so giggly and happy, and I was too. I loved the way she smiled and the way she laughed. I loved the way she pronounced my name. She was the only person besides my family to get it right and not treat the way it should be said like it was an ancient surname from Babylonian times.

"Awn-ah," she had said, with this certain fluidity to it that I still remember to this day.

"That's right!" I had giggled back, beaming with pride. "Anna!"

We spent our time together inside the school building every day (the teachers were completely okay with it, they probably knew about her health problems and let her be) and sometimes, when she was feeling extra strong, we'd go outside and savour the fresh air. We were always huddled up together, closely knit, like two peas in a pod. Sometimes she even came over to my house and I went over to hers. Her parents seemed like really great people.

Our friendship lasted even until the school year ended.

Over the summer, we still went to each other's houses, but we had to play inside since Elsa was very vulnerable to the heat. I was fine with it.

When summer ended, Elsa was moved up to middle school. Our play dates grew less frequent, to the point where I started to think she was moving on from me, but I tried not to dwell on it.

About a month or two before Christmas break, Elsa blatantly started to avoid me. I didn't know why, and I never got to know why. She never told me. After school, she'd go straight home and lock herself in. It was like my existence was suddenly void for some odd reason.

I had a small sliver of hope that she would at least reach out to me before the holidays started, but she didn't.

When the Christmas holidays arrived, I was dragged to the other side of the country by my uncle to go visit some distant relatives (all of whom had very strong Scandinavian accents), and Elsa and I didn't have any means to contact one another besides our mail addresses. She never bothered to use them, despite the fact that I explicitly told her it was alright to send me a few letters.

When break ended and January came, word got out that she was getting withdrawn from school. Whether it was because she was terribly ill, or abused at school, I didn't know, but I what I did know, was that I had to see her again, and ultimately find out why.

That same month, when the term opened again, I decided to sneak out of my last period of class and escape over to the Middle School annex.

I waited for the bell to ring and the students to pour out of the gates. I spotted Elsa's cool light hair from afar and secretly followed her all the way to her house, trudging through the snow.

It wasn't too far, maybe four turns and three blocks away. I knew exactly how to get to her house, and I knew every place mark to pass by.

When she neared the gates, I hid in the bushes. I watched her enter the house, glumly looking down at the doormat. When she got in and closed the door, I snuck in closer and pinned my ear to the not-very-sound-proof walls.

"Have you taken your meds?" I heard her father ask.

There wasn't any response so I'm guessing she had either shaken her head or nodded then.

"Have your bruises healed yet?"

No response again. Maybe she'd shaken her head this time.

"Well, that's alright. Soon you'll start homeschooling. That way nobody will hurt you..."

"...and I will not hurt anybody back," I heard Elsa finally respond. And at that very moment, I was very, very confused. Since when did Elsa ever hurt anybody? Elsa would never hurt anybody, and I was sure of it.

"Right," I heard her dad say. "Remember, Elsa. It doesn't infect-"

"-but it _affects_." she finished.

"I'm glad we made this choice," he continued. "The less contact you have with people, the faster you'll recover, and the safer others will be."

After that, Elsa's voice disappeared and so did her father's.

I suspected Elsa had gone to retreat to her room, so I scrambled out of the shrubs and followed her footsteps to her room. Somewhere between the act of me eavesdropping on them and making my way to the wall of her room, it had started to rain, and the snow crunching beneath my boots turned to sleet. (Ew.)

I climbed up the wall and peered into her window. She was setting her bag onto her desk, where there was a basket full of small boxes, and even smaller bottles of pills. She took one of the pills, and downed it with a glass of water. I was only like, 10, so I didn't really have any idea what they were for. I guessed that they were for a cold or fever or something.

My mind wasn't on the pills for long, though, because I lifted up the hatch, and pushed my head through her window.

"Hey, Elsa!" I whispered. My red hair was growing damper with the soft landing of the rain.

She looked to my direction. Her eyes widened. She dropped the bottle of pills onto the floor and clamped her hands over her mouth, to muffle a scream probably.

"We haven't seen each other in so long," I said, clambering into the window and making my way into her room, ignoring the drops of rain hitting my back and the look of sheer terror on her face. "We don't play anymore, we don't talk anymore, we don't go to each other's houses anymore..." I set foot into her room. I was full of hope; for me, it was a revolutionary step forward in mending our friendship back to the way it was before. "You always look so lonely when I see you walking back home," I say. "So I just thought that, maybe...you wanted to build a snowman with me?"

I'd expected her to hop in delight and follow me out, but her response was totally different from what I'd imagined.

She started to cry.

A lot.

I felt really confused and really conflicted when she did. I thought, maybe she had a thing against snowmen, or didn't like the fact that I was asking her to play outside when it was raining. That wasn't the most pressing matter, though, so I decided to try and comfort her.

I started to walk over to her, but she backed away.

"Please, just go away," she said between sniffles. "It's for your own good- I'm just going to end up hurting you."

"Elsa, you'd never hurt me!" I said, trying my best to smile, but believe me, smiling was the hardest thing to do in that situation.

I reached out to hold her hand or something - anything, to calm her down, but maybe I was too impulsive with my actions, because in one swift movement, she swatted my hand away, quick and hard, like I was made of fire.

My arm jerked back, and I rubbed at the sharp sting on my hand. It hurt, but the pain I saw in her eyes hurt even more. To be honest, it probably hurt _her_ more than it hurt _me_.

My levels of confusion and confliction went up about twenty levels. Tears started prickling at my eyes. I was in a state of shock; I didn't know why she had rejected my advances.

She started to cry even more. I was about to cry, too.

Then, her father walked in, and the look that he had plastered onto his face was stamped into my brain and left there to be remembered for the rest of my life. It was a real big mess. Her dad freaked out. I don't remember his exact reaction, because I was too focused on Elsa's tears, but I remember clearly that it was a horrible reaction. I didn't understand why he'd overreacted so much, and to this day, I still don't.

He was scolding and berating Elsa and never once chided me, when I was in fact, at fault of it all.

He noticed the red swelling on the area where Elsa had slapped me, and started blaming her. Elsa wouldn't stop crying.

He apologized to me, said it would never happen again, and sent me away. It was messed up in every way possible.

I was banned from seeing her ever again, and her, likewise - but something told me that she was banned from seeing people in general; she was promptly withdrawn from school the following day.

The whole thing kind of broke me afterwards. I was left not understanding why she'd avoided me. All I needed was one reason, but even that was out of my reach.

Three years later, I got into middle school myself. That's when I met Kristoff. Let's talk about him again.

Kristoff, to be honest, was not a good replacement for Elsa at first. Not in the slightest. He was so, so weird. I mean, he ate jerky meant for dogs, how can that not be weird? (Admittedly, I've tried it too, but that's _completely _besides the point).

When we first started talking, he had no clue what I was saying. I had just recently gotten my braces fitted, and he refused to start any conversation with me, so our friendship went off to an awfully rocky start. But gradually, I got to know more about him, and discovered that he was broken in his own sort of way. There was this somewhat traumatic event early on in his childhood that led him to believe that people were only bent on cursing at him, cheating on him and beating him up.

He admitted to me early on that he wasn't at all interested in being friends with me. He had a Labrador named Sven that he considered to be his friend, and he said that he didn't need any more friends. I was so confused, because I didn't understand why he didn't feel lonely at all. I hated being so lonely, but he didn't seem to mind it in the slightest.

After a while, we started to click. We came to accept our differences, our problems, our faults. He even started making more friends. I didn't. I was never good at making friends. I was probably better at pissing people off when I was singing and dancing too loudly in the hallways. One friend was good enough for me, though.

When high school came around, I could tell Kris was trying his absolute best to make sure I was having a fun time, even if his other friends crowded over his attempts at keeping me happy. I _was_ happy, though! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. As long as I was with people, I was satisfied.

The years went by fairly quickly. In the end, I didn't loathe high school. Middle school was better by a long shot, partly because I could go a day without hearing some group of boys discussing the equivalence of Red Bull and cocaine, but it was still pretty great! There was never really a bad day that was brought on by anybody or anything other than myself, so it was all good. I still enjoyed life.

So! By now you're probably wondering: where the heck am I now?

Well, I, Anna, am in college. I am 18 years old, but no better than a 12 year old, in a wide variety of senses. I am dorky, I am awkward, and meet all criteria to be clumped together with the socially incapable. Some days, I'm the cheeriest girl in the dorm. Other days, I'm the gloomiest. The gloomy days are the rainy days. When it's a rainy day, it's a sad day. When it's a sad day, Kristoff has to come in and cheer me up. When he cheers me up, it so happens to be today.

* * *

I'm not one for getting up early, so on Saturdays, I take full advantage of the opportunity to get as much sleep as possible. Naturally, by the time I wake up at around noon, Kristoff's already out. How he manages to manually get up so early is beyond me, to be honest.

Kristoff, who is my roommate now, by the way, used to have a ton of friends back in high school. But after we graduated, they all parted ways, so now all he has left is me. And what better way to stay close than to be roommates, right?

After I wake up feeling well rested, I take a lengthy hot shower. When I finish, my hair, for once, is not a bird's nest, as Kristoff likes to call it.

Afterwards, I put on some recently washed pajamas, curl up on the living room couch, watch the rain outside pelting down from the sky, and mentally ramble about a multitude of moderately saddening occurrences that have happened during the course of my seemingly uneventful life. Wow, was that a mouthful.

Just as I'm about to employ a decent dose of wit into my mental rambling, the phone buzzes on the cushion beside me. I take it upon myself to check whatever's on the screen. It's a text from Kristoff.

** Kristoff: **Guess who? :o)

I raise an eyebrow and suppress a smile. I have no idea what he's up to.

Just when I'm about to reply to his text, a loud noise erupts from outside of my apartment room, and the door bursts open, causing me to jump up from the couch and yelp.

It's Kristoff. He's beaming at me with the goofiest grin I've ever seen him wear. The look on his face and the unmanly blondness in his shaggy hair completely contradicts his monstrous stature and usually gruff demeanor, and it's absolutely hilarious.

He's definitely not one for goofy grins, so I know something's up.

"Hey, Kris!" I say, hopping away from the sofa, ignoring the fact that he almost scared me to death. I go up to greet him, and he ruffles his gloved hand into my untamed hair.

"How's my optimism-drained 'lil les of mine?" he asks.

"'Optimism drained 'lil les?" I reply sarcastically, trying to stifle a giggle. "Would you just stop it with the dumb nicknames?"

He laughs and puts his arms up in mock defeat. "Alright, alright, I'll go back to Anna Banana." He throws himself onto the couch.

"Fine by me," I say. I grab the comb on my desk and work it through the hundreds of knots in my hair (I just washed my hair, how is it so frazzled already?).

"So look," he says, with a hint of enthusiasm. Kristoff is rarely enthusiastic about things rather than sassy, so it catches my interest. "I know rainy days are hard for you, and bring back a lot of bad memories...but I'm going to change that. Today."

At this point I'm a bit more than surprised.

I bring my free hand to my forehead and jokingly feign a swoon (being a drama queen is a little hobby of mine).

"Oh, what could Sir Kristoff Bjorgman possibly do to charm the dreadful Princess?"

He smirks again. "I," he declares, "am going to take you somewhere."

I look at him with half-lidded eyes and grinning lips. "No. Way," I dead pan. "Kristoff Bjorgman, of all people, is taking me out on a date."

"It's not a _date_," he huffs.

"Ooh, but remember that time in the ninth grade when you tried to help me come to terms with my sexuality and decided to invite me over for dinner?"

"Anna-"

"-and you offered me a _whole stinkin' cabbage _and called it a _salad?_"

He crosses his arms and gives me a cheeky look over from the couch. "Okay, before I change my mind- are you coming or not?"

I raise my arms in mock resignation at the sign of annoyance in his brow. "Alright, alright. I'll go and get ready."

I try to hide the bubbling feeling of excitement inside when I make my way back to my room, but I practically _prance _my way there; I nearly fracture my hip bumping into the door frame, and almost break my foot leaping into the room. Kristoff _rarely _takes me anywhere besides the laundromat, so how can I _not _be excited?

Locking the door, I replace my pajamas with something slightly more presentable: a white button down shirt underneath a pink sweater, and a regular pair of black jeans. I'm not a member of the fashion police, mind you.

I wander into the bathroom and start to do my strawberry blonde mane (that's what my hairdresser calls it) into my usual twin braids. In the mirror, I see the same ordinary face that I see every day. Same field of freckles, same turquoise eyes. Pretty boring, if you ask me. Nothing like the girl I knew so many years ago.

Something awfully bright fights its way into my field of vision, and my eyes shift over to the window at my left. Outside is perfectly clear skies and absolutely no sign of rain.

Wait.

It's stopped raining.

_It's stopped raining!_

I quickly finish braiding my hair, and do all of the other remaining things that are considered norm for getting ready to go out, which apparently includes knocking over every single bottle and jar on the sink. I burst out of the bathroom door, slide across the hardwood floor in my socks, throw on my shoes, and grab my bag.

"Kristoff's taking me somewhere and it's not raining! Kristoff's taking me somewhere and it's not raining!" I chant, running past him and rushing out the door and into the fresh air. I stop in my tracks and poke my head back through the door.

"You're not taking me to the laundromat, are you?"

He chuckles and gets up from the couch. "No, I'm not. And, gee, feisty pants, slow _down, _would you?"

"Hah!" I shout snidely, throwing my nose up. "Only if you can catch me, Bjorgman!"

And I flee.

I race down the hall. I don't take the elevator because that's about sixty levels of lame. I instead skip down the stairs, and jump over the railings, all whilst singing the Spiderman theme in animal sounds and gibberish.

"Anna!" I hear Kristoff scream from somewhere above as I explode out of the stairwell. I decide to ignore him.

Rows and rows of trees whiz by the opposite end of the road. I feel slightly bad for Kristoff. His bulky build sure does slow him down a lot, so I slow my running pace down to a jog. He eventually gets closer, but I keep my place in front of him and make sure that there's a little less than a metre of space between us. I take glances back at him and notice he's a little out of breath. I recall that he's been having trouble with his knee ever since he had an accident during a snowboarding trip, so I slow down and gradually stop. He finally catches up to me.

"Whew," he huffs. "You're terribly energetic for somebody who lives off of chocolate bars and $4 bags of candy from the bulk section of Save-On-Foods." He clutches at his knee and tries to catch his breath. "Have you even eaten anything yet?"

I put my hand to my chin and raise an eyebrow. I open my bag and see the doughnut that was supposed to be yesterday's dinner wrapped in a napkin next to my wallet. "Hm. Now that you mention it, I haven't."

He looks at me sort of funny. "How many hours of sleep did you have?"

"Hmm. About eleven," I say.

"Pfft. Well that explains a lot," he says.

"Shhh," I hum. I start walking at a leisurely place, and he follows suit. "I don't need that kind of sass in my life. I can live without it."

He gives me a glare and crinkles his nose. His nose is a bit big so it looks kinda funny when he does it. "Are we going to play the 'things I can live without' game?" he asks. "Because I can name a whole lot of things about you that I could really do without, Anna."

"Like?"

"Like the fact that you have a bigger porn stash than I do."

I stop walking and stare at him dead in the eyes without making another move. "How do you know about that?"

"You couldn't have been more obvious," he says sarcastically. "You labeled the folder 'fluffy ducklings and totally not anything erotically obscure' and put it on your desktop."

"And who said you could use my laptop without my permission?!"

He pauses. He looks away and starts whistling idly.

A mischievous grin makes its way onto my face. "At least my sexual frustration isn't as embarrassing as the fact that you have to hug a stuffed reindeer to fall asleep."

This time, it's him that's glaring.

"Hey, hey. I won't judge," I reassure him.

The rest of the walk is mostly composed of long periods of silence and the mildly disgusting sounds of rain water squelching under our shoes. Speaking of shoes, Kristoff wears these funky square-shaped boots that curl at the tip, kind of like what the elves in Santa Claus' workshop wear, minus the pom-poms and noisy jingly bells, which would have been extremely annoying if he did have them, considering twenty minutes later, we still haven't reached our destination yet. It would have been twenty minutes of jingly bells if he worked for Santa Claus. Imagine that. The more that I fantasize about it, the faster I realise that the month of December is only a few weeks away, which is exciting but also quite scary, because I'll have to see my 7-foot-tall uncle again, who's going to force me to listen to him rave about his homemade sun balms and jars of putrid lutefisk.

Fifteen minutes later, we start veering off campus boundaries, which, surprisingly, is more exciting than the fact that December is drawing near, because I haven't been off college grounds for some time now.

Another thing that draws near, is the realisation that I have no idea where Kristoff is taking me. Heck, he's making me get on the _bus _right now. If he's taking me on a bus just to go to a laundromat, I am going to kill him.

We get on, and it's empty. He holds onto a bus handle, I squeeze onto a pole. I try to contain my giddiness. Kris takes out his phone from his left pocket and starts texting. It makes me wonder if he's seeing someone right now. What if he's seeing a real hot chick? What if he's actually seeing a guy? These are the type of things I think about when taking a bus ride.

We get off at a stop downtown ten minutes later and he checks his phone again. We walk past the CBC News Station and he's still got his nose stuck to the screen.

"What have you got yourself all engrossed on the phone for?" I ask, lifting my head up so I can have a proper look at his face.

"Constant surveillance," he replies, not looking away from the screen.

"Ooh, can I see?" I ask, bringing his arm toward me.

He pulls his arm away and pushes his hand into my face. "You can't look. Ever heard of privacy?"

"Says the person who deliberately looks into my porn folder and is currently using his phone for 'constant surveillance'. Show me, show me," I plead, making grabby hands at him.

"I don't take orders from people who are incapable of opening up bottles of water," he quips.

"Well, excuse you," I mutter. "but you should take pride in the fact that I have to get help from _you_ just to have a drink of water."

A few moments later, we reach a district filled with rows and rows of shops and restaurants. It's mesmerizing to me, even though there isn't a whole lot of people around, especially considering the fact that it's a Saturday. I fight back the urge to take Kris' hand and bounce all over the place.

Soon, I'm so captivated by all there is to see, that I don't notice that I've walked too far and left him behind.

I jog back over to him to see what he's up to.

"What are you standing around for, Kris?"

His eyes are elsewhere. "Look in front of you, Anna!"

I turn to look at what he's facing at. It's a coffee shop with a sign written in French, presumably something fancy in an attempt to make it seem classy when it's probably not.

"This is it," he says.

"What is this?" I ask. "Some sorta...Quebecois variant of Tim Horton's? You know, from the French sign and all." I pause. "You gonna...apply for a job here or something? Seems a little high-society for a person like you, Kris."

"No, no, this is it, Anna. This is the place I wanted to take you to."

I gawk.

"You took me on a 40 minute trip to go to a _coffee shop_?!" I stuff my face into my hands. "I can't believe you, Kris. You know I don't even like coffee."

"No, the coffee isn't the point, Anna."

"Then what's the point?!"

"Keep walking, Anna Banana," he says, pushing me towards the shop with one hand and checking his phone again with the other. "Just keep walking, and you'll see the point of it all."

I tentatively go along with it all and slowly go forward. Maybe he's found a girlfriend for me to hook up with to satisfy my insatiable sex drive (which, admittedly, is the bane of my entire existence, because never once have I ever gotten laid). Maybe he's found a boyfriend/girlfriend that _he's _hooked up with, and he wants to introduce me to him/her. Maybe he just wants me to grow up and have a coffee. That makes sense, too.

He pushes me through the glass doors and I'm surrounded by a clash of sweet and bitter scents. It feels nice and homey inside, and there's a shelf full of books with ostentatiously long titles, but the place itself is empty. The French name must've been a huge turn-off. But it's not entirely empty, actually. There's a woman ordering a large coffee at the counter. Well, I'd assumed she'd ordered the excessively tall coffee for herself, but it's the guy behind the cashier with the funky sideburns that's drinking from it. He waves, and I'm not sure if he's waving at me or Kristoff, but then I realise that Kristoff is not in the immediate vicinity. The damned rat's bailed on me.

Then, the customer-woman (who I guess just came for a chat), turns around and looks at me. When I look back at her, I suddenly understand what it means to have your heart jump. And _boy_, did my heart jump.

It's her.

Just a few feet away from me, is the materialisation of my past, and hopefully, my future. In front of me, a slim and slender figure wrapped in a long, black trench coat. In front of me, blindingly round, blue eyes and the rosiest of cheeks on pale skin. Gone is the long braid and headband that I used to know. Here, is platinum blonde hair done neatly into a plaited bun. Gone are the cute fluffy cheeks of pre-pubescent youth, and here, is the narrowed jaw line of maturity. And here I am, legs wobbling uncontrollably and throat dry as a desert. I want to say something, _anything_, but nothing in my mind is able to take verbose form.

She stares, composed, eyes boring into mine.

"Hi," she finally says. Her voice sounds a thousand times different than what it did a decade ago. I remain silent, still in too much shock to react.

She giggles and puts her dainty fingers to her smiling lips. "Hi," she says again, but this time her words manage to break through my ears.

"Elsa. Elsa, Elsa, Hi, Elsa," I blurt, but suck in some air to prevent myself from saying her name too many times, even though I want to say it even more.

"Anna," she says, without any connotation behind it.

I have no idea what to say.

If I could sign my heart up for a marathon, I can guarantee you that it'd win first place, because my heart is running all kinds of races.

I try to push a sentence out, but that doesn't work. I try a phrase, a word. Eventually, something does come out, though between croaks and stutters.

"You're...you're so, so _beautiful_, Elsa," I say, "and I...oh my gosh." I cup my face into my hands. I peek at her through the gaps of my fingers. She's laughing and pressing a palm to her collarbone.

"Thank-you," she says. I'm not sure if she's under-reacting or if I'm overreacting, because she's managed to keep herself so calm, while I'm blubbing out incoherent nonsense.

"This is- this is so wonderful, Elsa, you've changed so much, you've gotten so much prettier- n-not that you weren't pretty when I first knew you oh so many years ago, but now, I- wow," I sputter.

I take a step forward so that I'm just a few inches away from her. She takes a step backward and bumps into the side of the counter.

I reach out to touch her, but her hand retreats immediately. She grabs onto the edge of the granite surface and her body visibly starts to shake. Her eyes flash with about twenty different shades of agony. She looks at me like she's just witnessed a war.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I say, voice brittle when it's pushed out of my throat. My instincts tell me to move forward again. My instincts are so, very wrong.

Her hands start to palpitate and her breath quickens all of a sudden.

Her face is a mix of horror, and, well, more horror. My face? A mix of confusion, and more confusion, probably. I try to reach out and do something, but she jerks away again and looks at me with the most horrified expression. She squeezes onto the scarf at her neck. It's like her hands are having seizures of their own.

The guy with the auburn hair behind the cashier, who I completely forgot had existed, literally steps over the counter. He takes Elsa to a table nearby and sits her down, all within the time-frame of about 10 seconds. He grabs a blanket out of nowhere, wraps it around her, takes a pillow (also out of nowhere, where the heck is he getting these things from?), and gently pushes it into her arms. Her breath wobbles and she tries to control it, but they still come out sporadically. She looks at me just standing there, with plenty of space between us. It's like her eyes are speaking to me, and all I can hear from her when she looks at me is, "I'm sorry". I don't know what she'd be sorry for if she'd actually said it. I should be the one that's sorry. But her visual apologies grow cloudy and her breathing turns uneven again.

The cashier goes over to the back to get a glass of water, but when he comes back, Elsa passes out and her head falls to the table with a loud thump.

He looks at me, and I look at him.

"I'm Hans," he says plainly after a moment of silence, and he puts on a bright smile. I choose not to respond to him.

At this very moment, I just wish that there was an option in life that said, "don't put me into social situations, because I, in no way, have any idea how to deal with them." And, I also want the answer to "What in the _hell _is up with Elsa," because right now, that is the only question that needs to be answered.

* * *

Thanks so much to tumblr user_ haythamkenwagron_ for putting up with BETAing! Please do check out her blog. You can also find me on tumblr under the URL _meterapix_!

Until then!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** I apologise for the month wait for a chapter half the length of the first! There were some communication issues with my BETA... but it won't happen again!

* * *

Hans is standing over by the couch near the bookshelf with the glass of water in his hand, while Elsa's still passed out on the coffee table.

"What in the _heck _just happened?" I ask him.

Hans puts the glass down on the counter and leans on his elbow.

"Oh, well, she um... she'll wake up in a moment. It happens a lot, don't worry about it," he says. "So... your name's Anna, right?"

I give him a blank stare and try to figure out whether or not what I just heard was right. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute," I say, furrowing my brow. "Before we get onto the introductions- are we really just going to leave her there with her head on the table? Should I... should I take her to the hospital?"

"No, it's fine, she'll be up in like, a few," he assures me. Only it doesn't assure me.

"O...kay then." I say. "I'm just going to... do what I would do."

I tip-toe over to where she's knocked herself unconscious and hover my hands over her, just to make sure she's really out cold. It would be a total disaster if she were awake, believe me.

Once I make sure she's still asleep, I hook my right arm underneath her knees and secure my left arm around her upper back. I take a deep breath, lift her up to me, and try my best not to ruin her neat and proper black coat. Despite what I'd initially thought, she's actually super light- maybe lighter than me even. I don't think it's too strange, since she's an inch or two taller than me.

Admittedly, it feels nice when she's asleep in my arms... like there's this sort of warmth that binds us together, and forms between us a tautly woven tie. It's not the physical kind of warmth, though; more of an emotional kind. I can't really put my finger on it, but it's a nice feeling nonetheless, and a feeling that I welcome wholeheartedly.

I carry her over to the couch near the bookshelf, gently bring her down, and set her head onto the armrest. I adjust the blanket (security blanket, now that I think about it) around her, tuck her in, and loosen the scarf tied around her neck.

It takes me a while to realise how much she's changed over the years.

I start to have a lot of whats pop into my head—"what is going on?", "I wonder what Elsa's been up to the past ten years", "what made her avoid me for so long?"—but then the whats go away and are replaced with the image of her alluring face.

I never forgot how pretty I thought she was back then, but now, I just can't help but think she's gotten even prettier. She looks at peace too, compared to how she looked just a few minutes ago. I soon realize that watching people sleep is incredibly creepy, so I look back over to Hans.

I never bothered to look at him long enough to take in his features. He has a long face and a pointy noise, and his eyes are a peridot green. His hair is a nice auburn that's parted in the middle and left in sideburns that go just past his ears.

"She freak out often?" I ask him.

"Often enough," he says casually. The way he stands around is sort of clumsy. "But not as bad as this. She's never fainted like that before."

"Hmm," I hum. "All... right then."

His face softens. "You should... probably make sure there's about a metre of space between you guys the next time you speak to each other."

My heart sinks when he says it.

I brush it off and take a seat at one of the many empty tables, and he sits next to me.

We start talking and when I think it's going to be a pretty edgy conversation, things actually go pretty smoothly! He tells me about his twelve brothers (three of which ignored him for two whole years, can you believe that?) and jokes about how his parents were real baby makers and kept producing children for thirteen consecutive years.

He describes his awesome apartment room to me and the weird things he has stuffed in his closet, but really I'm more interested in his relationship with Elsa. So I ask him, and he talks about how he and Elsa have only actually known each other for about a week or two, and how the first time they met was when she happened to stumble into the coffee shop and needed a quick breather. He says she doesn't seem to have much trouble speaking to other people, so he's also pretty confused as to why she freaked out so bad.

We end up talking a lot about ourselves and how we were never really that close to our family, so in a way, we connected over that little fault in our lives. He opens up to me and says that he doesn't really like his family at all, right after I tell him that I really love my uncle, but he's okay with it.

We also talk about Kristoff and I tell Hans about that one time I went to his place and we played on my Wii.

"And Kristoff was like, 'Sven - Sven is his dog, by the way - if she doesn't stop doing that, it's going to stop me from playing Mario Kart with her ever again.' Then I proceeded to beat him to first place on the final lap and he tossed the steering wheel out the window, and it took him a while to get the money for a replacement and an appointment for glass repair."

He laughs, and I laugh, and laughing is great because for a moment you forget about all the sad things in life and sometimes that's just what you need.

Hans seems like a pretty cool guy. He's funny, he doesn't talk like he's so full of himself, and he talks like he cares about me, and that makes me happy. And the things he chooses to discuss are a lot more existential than what Kristoff wants to talk about. Kristoff and I argue about things like the effectiveness of using words such as 'fudge' as a substitute for more vulgar ones, while Hans asks me about how I feel about life, which I think is pretty impressive.

"How's life for you?" he asks me.

"It has its up and downs," I tell him. "Sometimes things are good and it all goes downhill from there. Sort of like when you're drinking hot chocolate and everything is tasting pretty great. Then you get close to the bottom of the mug and you're met with something thick, stodgy, and overall kinda gross. But then you put in some more hot chocolate and maybe top it off with some whipped cream and everything's okay again! Life is good like that."

He nods like he totally gets me, and I actually think he does. "Keeping things positive I see."

"I try," I say. I honestly never knew I could answer a question like that.

"So," he trails off, after talking for what feels like a solid hour (but was probably only about twenty minutes; I have a pretty broken perception of time). "Want a drink or something?"

It takes a moment for me to register what he just asked and look over at the board with their various drinks scrawled out in chalk.

"Might as well have a hot chocolate," I say. "Or on second thought, a coffee would be great. That's probably what Kristoff would have wanted me to have, anyway. Make sure it's something sweet. Something vanilla-y."

"Will do," he says. "A cinnamon vanilla coffee for Anna." He goes over to the back and starts doing his thing.

I idly tap my fingers across the table and take occasional glances at Elsa.

"Hey Hans," I say. I get up and play with everything in sight; the potted plants, the tip box, the newspapers. "This was all Kristoff's idea, wasn't it?" I bring up a vase of white flowers and take in its scent. It vaguely reminds me of vanilla, which makes me want to eat it, but eating flowers probably isn't a good idea so I set it down again.

He looks at me over from the coffee machine. "Well, I heard about you from Kristoff, and he told me how you were feeling all down in the dumps because you missed your childhood friend." He presses a few buttons. "So I told him, hey, I know someone who misses their childhood friend too! Then we figured out you were referring to each other and we were pretty surprised by the whole thing so we thought, well, why not?"

"...so this is what he was planning for the whole time," I say as he brews the coffee. "What a _dweeb_. A nice, thoughtful, awesome, caring dweeb."

"Dweeb? That's new."

"To us it sure isn't," I laugh, but it isn't the happy kind of laugh. It's more of a sombre kind.

I look over to Elsa and feel things that don't really make much sense. I feel happy to know that she's back, looking elegant as can be, but I also feel sad for some odd reason. When I look at her, I still miss her, even though she's right here in the same room as me; something that hasn't come to be in a long time. And I don't know how two completely unlike things could possibly be felt at once. So I snap out of my little trance and carry myself around the room in search of another distraction.

A short while later, Hans slides the mug across the counter and I pass him a few bills, to which he tells me it's on the house. I give him a funny look.

"Will your boss be okay with that?"

"Hey, it's alright," he shrugs. "I can pay for it. I'm the only guy who works here on weekends."

"Serious?" I ask, taking a cautious sip from the coffee, which is seeping with sugar and the sweet taste of vanilla.

"Yup," he says. He takes a broom out of nowhere. "I do the cleaning around here too."

Another sip. "Wow," I say. "That's harsh."

He walks over the counter again like it's nothing, jumps down, and starts sweeping near my feet. I set my bag onto the surface he's just recently stepped on.

I give him a weird look. Who the heck walks over high surfaces like that and randomly starts cleaning the floor? Totally weird. But then again, who dances around and sings power ballads in the middle of nowhere like I do? Yeah, nobody does, so we're fair.

I take another swig of the coffee and look over at Elsa. She's still out cold, but just the sight of her forces a smile onto my lips. Her skin is this cold, sparkly white but her cheeks look so warm and soft. I kind of want to squeeze and pull them.

Just as I'm about to take another contemplative sip of coffee, song breaks out in the room.

_Won't you come see about me_

_I'll be alone, dancing you know it baby_

"Oh! That's my phone," I say, putting away the coffee and fumbling through my bag.

_Tell me your troubles and doubts_

Hans stops sweeping and looks at me with wide eyes. "Is that seriously your ringtone?"

I struggle to plow through my cluttered bag. "Yeah," I say, brushing aside all the random articles, including my trusty Nintendo 3DS (which I keep with me at all times) and yesterday's maple doughnut (which I should probably throw out soon). "Do you not like it?"

"No, no!" He chirps. "I _love _this song!" He clears his throat. "_Giving me everything, inside and out_," he sings.

I beam at him. We are totally doing this. We are totally having a musical number. I was _born_ ready for this moment. I knew things like this really did happen in real life and not only in the movies. Kristoff was _wrong_.

I push my bag away and start jamming with him. He holds the broom up like a guitar and starts to strum.

"_Slow change may pull us apart_," I sing, pointing at him and shaking my hips, immersing myself into the music.

He swerves around and bops his head. "_When the light gets into your heart, baby."_

I jump onto a nearby chair and start belting it out. "_Don't you... forget about me!"_

He jumps onto the chair parallel and brings his broom-guitar with him. "_Don't don't don't don't,"_

I pump my fist into the air. "_Don't you... forget about-" _

"Are you going to answer the phone or not?"

We both freeze. The phone stops ringing. We turn our heads and look over to the couch. Elsa is sat upright with the blanket draped over lap. Her hand is covering her mouth, a few quiet laughs escaping from her.

"Elsa!" I say. "You're awake!"

I jump down from the chair and skip over to her. I make sure there's about half a metre of space between us. "How are you feeling?"

"Still hyperaware of my breathing and heart rate, but thank-you for asking," she says, with a soft smile.

I keep my hands behind my back. "...that _does_ mean you're feeling okay, right?"

"Yes, Anna, I'm okay," she says, giving me yet another reassuring smile.

Silence ensues. I nervously curl a strand of hair behind my ear. I don't really know what to say. What _do _you say to someone you've known for ten years, but never had any sort of contact with for all of those years?

"So, Elsa," I say, trying desperately to hide the awkwardness in my voice. "Um... i-if the phone rings again, do you wanna... join us for another musical number?"

She giggles and covers her mouth.

"Oh, Anna, thank-you for the offer, but I'm afraid I'll have to decline for now."

She gets up from the sofa and the blanket slides off, revealing her long coat and clean, ironed jeans.

"I'll leave you two to it," says Hans, and he retreats to the back of the store.

When he leaves, we just stand there in silence. A fire in me begs for me to leap over and hug her as tightly as I can, but I have to fight it away.

We exchange shy glances and say nothing else. She smiles and her cheeks puff up in this really cute way so I don't have any incentive to stop her. I _do, _however, have the incentive to speak up and say something to her, but nothing comes up.

But when something does come up, and Elsa's the one to say it, it's "sorry."

"I'm so sorry," she tells me, but she doesn't say it once. She tells me it over and over again until I'm sure her own words are going to make her start crying because her expression just falls and fills with sadness so I tell her it's okay and I forgive her for whatever she's sorry for.

"Anna," she tells me with her face still frowning, "I want to start again. I want to be friends with you again and I just hope our past won't stop that future."

I want very much to ask her why she left me in the first place, but I don't. I look down at her gloved hands and I want to hold them, but I don't. And then I wonder why I can't hold them or why I can't hug her, so I rack up enough courage to tell her, "Elsa, I'd like to hug you."

She frowns and says, "I'd like to as well, but I can't."

"Why not?" I ask.

"Because I'm not ready for anything like that."

"Why not?" I ask again.

"Anna, I spent the last ten years cooped up all alone in my room, and I-"

"But _why_?" I shoot. "What did you even do all those years?"

"Anna please do _not _ask me so many questions."

I take a step forward. "But I want to kno-_whoa!" _My knee bends at a weird angle, my eyes meet with the ceiling and I fall backward. But then, just before I hit the ground, Elsa grabs onto my hand and my heart stops for a moment. And when I think she's going to let go, she doesn't. She holds on even _tighter_. Her eyes are wide with surprise, and mine are too. And even when she pulls me back onto my own two feet, she's _still_ holding on.

Her gaze averts from my eyes to her hand. She stares at it long and hard with this sort of concerned expression, and I'm a little confused by it. But then she looks up to my eyes again. I positively _beam _at her.

"See, Elsa?" I exclaim. "Everything's okay!"

She lets go of my hand, but not it's not abrupt. It's gradual, and gentle. She doesn't freak out. Her breathing's still a bit deep and heavy, but it isn't fast and erratic. Her hands have a slight tremble to them, and she's staring them down like she wants them to stop, but it's all very subtle so I'm not entirely sure if I should pay any mind to it.

Her eyes meet mine again for a long while, and she simply stares without saying another word. I clasp my hands together and bite my lip.

"Are we okay?" I ask.

"We're okay," she tells me.

After that, I expect her to say a number of things, but she doesn't say anything at all. We just stare for even longer and spend a lot of time looking into each other's eyes, to the point where I don't know what to do with my arms anymore.

I'm starting to think our newly recovered friendship is going to be composed solely of stares and really awkward attempts at conversation, but as long as we're together as friends I don't see anything wrong with it.

Elsa starts again with another apology. "I honestly feel horrible and I truly am sorry," she says.

I cling onto my left arm. "Hey, I don't really get it, but I forgive you." I wish she'd tell me what this was all about. "Just you being here is enough for me. I mean, my three years probably has nothing on your ten."

"Three years?" Her eyebrows knit together. "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, you know, I spent three years sitting alone on uncle Oaken's rusty old swingset everyday when you left me but that's not the point! Those three years won't have anything on the rest of the years I'll get to spend with you from now on, right?"

She looks at me all suspicious and opens her mouth to say something, but Hans comes out from the back with a plump paper bag in his hand.

"Elsa, you shouldn't keep her waiting," he says from over the counter.

"Oh, right," she says hastily. "I should probably get going".

"What? Elsa, where are you going?" I ask.

"I have an appointment."

An "oh" escapes from me. "Th-then before you go, we should probably exchange phone numbers," I say. I hope I don't sound too desperate.

We unlock phones and put in our numbers. Her phone case has pretty little snowflakes of different shapes and sizes on it. Mine has pieces of candy and chocolate all over.

After we give each other a means to contact one another and Elsa gets the paper bag from Hans, we stand around just outside the shop waiting for the other to say something.

"Will you be staying at the coffee shop for a while longer?" she finally asks.

"Oh!" I blurt. "Oh, right! I've got to go find out where Kristoff ran off to!"

"...Kristoff?"

"A friend of mine," I say.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That's... good."

"Yeah. He's... good." We breathe kind of uncomfortably. "So see you some other time? Maybe tomorrow? At noon?"

"That sounds lovely," she says. "See you, Anna."

"Yeah," I say, slightly melancholic. "See you." I bite my lip to stop myself from saying anymore, but I can't. "Please tell me you won't leave me again," I say. "Promise me that?"

Another smile. "I promise you, Anna. To new beginnings."

"To new beginnings."

When she looks at me for the last time, I swear she's going stride over, seize me at the shoulder and give me a tight hug, but she doesn't. I don't really know why I thought she would. Maybe it was that extremely loving look she gave me. Or the fact that I may well be going nuts. So just before she leaves I tell her, "Don't forget the sun."

And she looks at me with this sort of half smile and asks me, "Whatever do you mean by that, Anna?"

"Well, staying in your room for ten years probably did a number on you, right? You forget the sun, and you forget how to smile... and... I don't know, I want you to be happy? Sorry if I make things really awkward."

She smiles, and I love it when she smiles, even though it's more of a bittersweet smile as opposed to the overexcited smiles I throw around everywhere. But this is more than just great, so I can't help but throw one at her, and we end up looking like dumb, smiling dorks standing around the entrance to the coffee shop.

We eventually part ways, and I say farewell to Hans, who probably witnessed the whole bout of awkwardness unfold before him.

When the coast is clear, I skip away from the coffee shop and start twirling around with excitement. Even though I'm prohibited from touching Elsa (that sounds _so _wrong) and have been reduced to just having eye contact with her, I'm still overjoyed to have her back in my life.

I prance out of the district and into a park full of numerous duck ponds and cyclists. The sky is clear, the air is fresh and crisp; mother nature really is giving me all of her little details today.

As I'm dancing in the grass and humming absentmindedly, my phone vibrates. It's a text. I immediately assume it's Kristoff berating me for ignoring his calls, but it isn't. It's a single message from Elsa. I trip over a bicycle rack and nearly fall into a shallow duck pond.

My legs carry me over to a bench and sit me down before I open up the text. When I do, her message happens to be one symbol: a heart.

Honestly, I think it's totally out of the blue and really unlike what I thought she was! But I can't help but fawn over it. And while it's only one small heart, right now, it's all I really need.

* * *

A hundred thanks to Karen for assisting in the making of this chapter. She's the absolute greatest!


	3. Chapter 3

The only things I remember about yesterday are the sudden meeting at the coffee shop and the dream I had last night, both of which had something to do with Elsa.

Kristoff found me giggling at my screen in the park that afternoon, and I tackled him the moment I saw him.

I talked his ears off about Elsa, and he asked if I was ever going to shut up about her. I told him no. He said that was okay. And I hugged him because I didn't get to hug Elsa and he understood.

We don't hug often, because he's a guy, and I'm a girl. But when we do hug, we always know that it goes nothing beyond friendly companionship.

When I thought he was getting tired of hearing about Elsa, I told him about Hans, and he was actually a little taken aback by the fact that I said he was really cool and funny. He told me that Hans is stern and curt with him, but still manages to be polite. I just shrugged it off and suggested that maybe he acts differently depending on the set of chromosomes you have. Kristoff said it made sense.

The dream I had that same day was surprisingly pleasant.

The sky was a nice dark shade of blue, and the hills were coated over with the shadows of the clouds. The moon was in the shape of the crescent, and Elsa was sitting on it in her trench coat and scarf, fishing for constellations amongst the swimming stars. I was down on the dry ground below, and Kristoff came up to me wearing a straw hat.

"Who's the girl who looks so beautiful up in the night?" I asked him.

"Oh, the girl on the moon? She's your miracle," he said to me. And while I found it very odd (he sounded like a funky old man whenever he spoke), I thought it was very sweet!

"I'd like to go and meet her," I said. "But I don't know if I can do it. Do you think I can?"

So after thinking for a while, he told me:

"You don't ask for things you're capable of doing. You discover them on your own. And you learn to love them."

And I don't know what happens next because I wake up, but I feel content so I don't mind the fact that I don't know the ending to my dream.

Kristoff knocks on my bedroom door, and I tell him to come in. He knows I don't usually wake up on my own, so he puts on a worried face. He's still in boxer shorts and a tee so I guess it's sometime early in the morning.

"Did you have a dream?" he asks.

"Yup."

"Dreamscale?"

"Eight out of ten," I reply with a smile, holding up eight fingers. "It was a very nice dream."

He grins. "Well, seeing as the last few have been a five or less, that's great! How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," I say with a smile. "And for now, that's just enough."

He smiles too.

'Dreamscale' is this sort of rating system that Kristoff and I came up with back when we were still in the process of becoming friends.

I used to get really bad dreams a lot and I didn't have anybody to talk to them about besides my uncle, so Kristoff didn't have any idea how bad my dreams were until I started giving them numbers and he came to understand how much terror I felt at night.

Nowadays I don't really get nightmares that much. Instead I space out a lot and think of Elsa or daydream about things that feel like they've happened before, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"You never wake up on your own," he says, crossing his arms. "Your body clock knows you're going somewhere, doesn't it?"

I think for a moment, and then the thought occurs to me. I gasp and squeal in delight. "That's right!" I beam. "I'm going to go meet Elsa again!"

He rolls his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Watch your sass, Bjorgman, or I'm going to hurt you!" I say, throwing the blankets off and jumping across the room to punch him. He brushes me off like I'm nothing and I laugh.

Today I decide to actually sit down and have breakfast with Kristoff and take advantage of our nice, spacey apartment room. You might be wondering how we managed to afford a place with a working refrigerator, and two bedrooms on opposite ends of the suite. Well, Uncle Oaken pays the rent for us! It took a _lot_ of convincing of course, because he's not very fond of Kristoff. At all. When he writes to me he always refers to Kris as 'that fellow', and the way he writes it in tiny melting letters just makes me _hear_ him say it in that low and callous tone he uses when telling off rude tradesmen.

Like I've said before, Uncle seems pretty scary at times, but really, he's the sweetest! I mean, yeah, I've seen him toss a full grown man out of shop before, but have you seen him with kids? Real cute. But when he's scary, he really is scary. Let me tell you:

When I was twelve (or thirteen? maybe eleven, I dunno, my memory is a blur) our class went on a field trip to the national history museum. You know, the one that has the stone tools and stuffed beavers.

So I got stuck in one of those Inuit tents they had on display and I had to wait for two hours for my teacher to come to my rescue because everyone else had gone to watch the First Nations puppet show. Ms. Fischer found me when lunch break ended and lectured my classmates on the bus for sticking me in there and leaving me without telling anyone. It wasn't actually them that did it, though. Sure, it was likely that they did because I've ended up with a bloody nose every time they picked on me about 'the white haired girl' (come on, her hair is platinum blonde! Ugh), but really it was just me being silly. I climbed up the tent when I wasn't supposed to. I kept quiet about it.

When I got home I was hungry because I hadn't eaten anything at all besides the half pack of Smarties I had that same morning, so the moment I put my bag away, I opened up the fridge to look for something to eat. And when I swung the fridge door open, it was like I had discovered a divine sanctuary for all things sweet. There was chocolate hanging out from the vegetable drawer, there were lollipops stuck in the egg holders, there were gummy bears frozen in the ice trays. And that's when I swore for the first and last time in my life. And I don't mean 'hell', or 'damn.' I mean: 'Holy. Fucking. Shit.'

It must've been pretty loud because Uncle heard it and grew to the height of the ceiling and said, "what did you just say?" And I learnt to never say words like that ever again.

Anyway, Uncle Oaken is actually pretty wealthy and I don't know where he gets the money from, but he pays my college fees and dorm room fees and everything so I don't really mind where he gets it. He never used to be so generous with money, though.

He used to have this little store called "Oaken's Trading Post", and he'd make trips across the border to buy large quantities of things that we didn't have here in Canada like some of those US-exclusive cereals, and Marlboro cigarettes (which some dudes in high school actually tried to get me to smoke, but let's be real, I wasn't cut out for that kind of stuff so I didn't do it).

To be painfully honest, Uncle was very cheap about everything! Well, not cheap. He just wouldn't let anyone haggle for any reason whatsoever. Which is not bad I guess, but... I dunno. I don't really get this kind of stuff.

But the real question is where he gets the money from. Like, I don't think he gets thousands of dollars off of Fruity Pebbles and Cookie Crisp. I don't think anyone can.

Kristoff and I have speculated that he gets the money from doing illegal drug trade with the Russian neighbours but we don't go through conversations like that anymore.

Kris and I take a seat at the table in pajamas and yesterday's set of teeth and each grab a bowl of cereal. I pour myself a box of Trix that Oaken bought me and sit cross-legged while Kristoff munches on a bowl of Raisin Bran (which I think is totally boring and gross).

Before I get the chance to start rambling how yesterday went again, Kristoff tells me about some book he tried to read called _The Fault in Our Stars_.

Kristoff doesn't like the book because he says seventeen-year-olds don't use metaphors and the word _hamartia_ in normal conversation like the two main characters do.

_I_ was seventeen last year and didn't even know the word _hamartia_ existed back then, and to be quite honest I still don't even know what it is now. It sounds like a type of sickness or injury to me, like you get this sort of weird bump on your leg and you go, "Oh, dear! Catch me will you? I've got a _hamartia!_"

Curiosity gets the better of me and I decide to look it up on Google halfway through my breakfast, and it turns out a hamartia is a 'tragic flaw in a person or character' and not a crippling leg inflammation.

As I'm reading more about the word, Kristoff puts his spoon down and finally tells me, "Okay, the hamartia wasn't the point. I can tell you want to talk more about Elsa."

"Sorry," I say, because he's painfully right.

"No, it's okay, you can tell me more about her."

"Really?" I say.

"Really," he says.

"Okay." I bite my lip. "I want to touch her," I say.

He nearly spits out his cereal. "_Already!?_"

"_Oh my God!" _I feel my face flush every shade of red possible._ "_I didn't mean it _that _way!"

"What else could you possibly mean?!"

"Ugh! Get your mind out of the gutter, would you!" I huff and feel my face burn hotter. "I meant like she says she can't hug me because she's not ready for that or something, and I want to hold onto her hand but I have to hold back because I think she's going to _freak out_, and I just want to feel her after ten years, you know? And like, ten years later I'm given the opportunity and I'm grateful for that but I don't _feel _like I'm grateful because I don't get to touch her... and... it kind of hurts in a way and I didn't get to hug _her_ so I... had to hug _you_."

"...Oh."

"...Yeah."

"...Do you need another hug?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." We get up from our chairs and give each other a tight hug.

After we finish our hug and breakfast, we get ourselves ready for the day. I put on a red flannel jacket, a black tee that says 'Love Is An Open Door', some blue jeans, and a wool scarf to brace myself for the early November chill. Kristoff puts on his plain black hoodie and toque. His toque is pretty old, and ripped in weird places (I've had to sew it back together for him a few times), but it's very special to him because it used to belong to his dad, who passed away some time ago in an avalanche.

I grab my bag, Kristoff takes his guitar (he tells me he's seeing someone after hanging out at the coffee shop and I wink), and then we head to the bus stop.

Kristoff hates it when I tag along with him somewhere because I always end up dashing ahead and swinging around every pole and handrail in sight. Today though, I try to keep myself calm and just enjoy the clean air and the sound of the birds chirping through the wind. The droplets of yesterday's form tempting puddles on the ground and I end up jumping in some of them. I kick and slosh like I'm a kid again, but Kristoff tells me to stop being such a child so I stick my tongue out at him behind his back.

We take the bus and arrive at the coffee shop with the sea breeze blowing past us. The shop is empty just like yesterday, and we see Hans further inside hanging around the till.

When we go in, Hans gives Kristoff a stern hello and gives me a warm one. We take a seat at one of the bigger tables next to the wall with the fancy analog clock.

Hans goes off to fill a customer's order and our orders too. Kristoff gets one of those bitter coffees which are really yuck. I ask for a coffee too, a vanilla flavoured one. While Hans is doing his job, I keep looking over at the door, waiting for the wind bells to chime again with Elsa standing under them.

"You look antsy," says Kris, putting the guitar case down and leaning back into his chair.

"Am I? I'm not," I say. I notice my legs are jumping and fidgeting so I push them down to make it stop.

"Explain your leg spasms to me, then."

"Well, gee, I dunno? I'm excited to see Elsa maybe?" I say, trying to catch on with Kristoff's sardonic mannerisms.

"_Excited_," he says with a smirk and suggestive eyebrow wiggle. "Excellent word choice. I bet Elsa gets you real excited_ all_ the time."

I blush and kick his leg. "She doesn't get me excited in _that_ way!"

Hans finishes up the customer's order first before he comes over to our table at the side with our coffees. Kristoff grabs his and takes a big gulp. I don't know how he can take coffee black. Mine has to have at least four gallons of sweetener and whipped cream. Kristoff must be the epitome of manliness, I guess.

"The shop always so empty?" he asks Hans, who's taking a seat across from me and next to Kris.

"Only weekends are empty," he says. "On weekdays - the days that I don't work - we get a lot more customers. "

"Ooh!" I chirp. "Then this can be our sort of... private weekend hangout place!"

"That's right!" says Hans, beaming at me and taking my hand, like Kris isn't even there. "We could hang out here every weekend!"

"Yeah!" I say, kicking my legs in excitement and accidentally stabbing into Han's shin with my foot. "Whoops, sorry Hans - and the four of us could bond together like they did in the library in _The Breakfast Club_! Just... less aggressively!"

Hans chuckles, grabbing onto his leg below the table and letting go of my hand. "You love that movie, don't you?" His voice is clear and a little deep.

"I don't get your obsession with that movie," says Kris. "The basket case got to kiss a guy she just knew for eight hours and fifty-four minutes at the end. It's unrealistic."

So we end up talking about _The Breakfast Club_. The title of the movie brings food into our discussion and Kristoff is clearly very hungry because his tummy rumbles about five times during our conversation.

Kristoff starts poking fun at the movie and asks me dumb questions like, "why isn't it called _The Dinner Club_?", and "why not _The Lunch Club_?". And while I _am_ obsessed with _The Breakfast Club _and _love _to talk about it, I'm still waiting. Waiting for Elsa to appear at the door.

So as I'm still punching Kristoff's arm for making fun of the film, I turn to look at the store front. And I see her. I see Elsa, standing at the doorway. And she's just standing. Looking a little speechless, even.

I jump out of my chair and contemplate skipping over to her and telling her how happy I am to see her, but I stay put. She grins, does her little wave, and walks in with a lovely outfit and a smile just as nice. She's clad in one of those expensive Burberry coats, tight black skinny jeans; gloves and boots.

"Hi," she says. Hans waves and asks her if she just finished with her appointment, to which she nods. I sit back down. Elsa takes a seat with the three of us, next to me. She moves the chair over a bit so there's a bit of distance between us.

"How are you?" she asks to no one in particular, but it's more like it's directed at me than at anyone else.

"Oh, I'm wonderful," I say, trying to keep my hands to myself, but they sway around like they have minds of their own. "And you look wonderful, too."

She rolls her eyes. "Ever the charmer."

My breath catches a bit. "A-am I?"

"You are."

Silence stills between us. Silence so prominent that the only sounds that fill the room are the ticking of the clock and the bubbling of the coffee maker. Kristoff eyes me, leans forward, and winks.

"Hey," he says to Elsa, breaking the silence. "I'm Kristoff. Anna's roomie and friend."

"...hi," she replies with a hesitant smile.

"Anna tells me about you all the time," he tells her. "She never stops."

Elsa eyes me and smirks. "Oh, do you?" I blush and swipe my leg into Kristoff's. He opens his mouth to say something else, but his tummy rumbles again really loud, loud enough for anyone inside the coffee shop to hear.

"Rude," I say. Elsa giggles and covers her mouth.

"I can't help it!" groans Kristoff. "I'm hungry!"

It rumbles again and the gurgling ripples throughout the room. Then he throws his head back and exclaims in this very serious voice, "Man, what I'd do for one of those super, super_ moist_ cakes from that one bakery down the road!"

And Elsa and I just burst into laughter. Like, the kind of laughter that makes your stomach hurt because it's just so funny.

I look at Kristoff through my laugh-induced tears and he's got the most dumbfounded face ever and it makes it all even funnier. Then I look at Elsa and she's clutching at her stomach like she's trying to find air.

"What did I even do to make them laugh so hard?" he asks Hans.

"You said super moist," he replies. "Women think it's funny."

"I don't know if you can even call these people women."

Elsa and I just keep going. It goes on for about a good minute or two. Eventually, we stop. But when Elsa and I look at each other, we lose it and start laughing again. It's what I call the laugh-laugh effects. You laugh, someone else laughs. You stop laughing, you look at each other, and you laugh again.

We have to take another minute of our time to contain ourselves.

A minute passes and the laughter stops.

Then it gets awkward.

The smiles go away. Elsa sits with her spine straight as a rod. Kristoff kicks back with his legs wide open (so rude!). Hans has his arms pressed to his sides, knees joined together. My shoulders are a little stiff, my knuckles are tapping together.

Hans' eyes follow the people outside passing by the coffee shop. Kristoff throws a stick of gum into his mouth. Elsa's field of vision flickers into collision with mine more than a few times. She keeps her hands folded neatly at her centre while mine just scream to hold hers, but I know she doesn't like to be touched so I cage myself.

Hans leans forward, sight flickering between me and Elsa. "Okay, so I want to make things clear," he says, and we look away from each other and to him."You two have, in a sense, known each other for around ten years." Elsa and I nod at the same time."But for some reason had stopped seeing each other and had gotten separated for all but one of those years." Another nod in unison. "So now you're friends again." Our eyes meet again. And the element of doubt just plays in my mind because while I want so much to be friends with her again, I just feel like she still hates me for some reason. So I say something, but she says the exact same thing as me at the exact same time:

"Do you consider me your friend?" And that makes us go quiet. It's like our thoughts crashed into each other.

We open our mouths to speak, but I start first, without letting my words filter through my brain first.

"I mean, of course I'd love to think you are my friend!" I say. "But we aren't going to be doing any... touching or anything like that... because you aren't okay with it. And I understand that... you aren't the touchy-feely type like I am." My mind tells me to stop talking but I keep going and I hate myself for that. "I don't see why that would make you want to stop seeing me, though. There can't be any good reason for leaving me for so long. I mean, you never even told me _why_. Thought maybe you hated my guts."

"What? Anna, please don't say that."

"Why not?"

"Anna, the whole thing hurt me and-"

"And you don't think it didn't hurt me?" I snap. She recoils. I didn't mean it. But I said it.

"Anna, I... " Her breath shakes, and it looks like she's summoning all the power she can to talk. "I thought I was going to hurt you."

"What's up with that?" I shoot. "You already have." God I wish I could shut up.

"Anna."

"Like, at least tell me why you won't let me hold your hand after wanting to for ten godforsaken years!"

"Anna!"

"Just tell me why you freak out when I try to touch you! Was it something I did, was it something I said?"

I burst out of my chair. She raises her hand to retaliate, but it starts to shake, so she takes a deep breath and puts it away, folding it with the other hand resting in her lap.

"I-I'm sorry, Anna, I really am," she says, after a while of tension. "I promise I did it for all the right reasons, but I'm still so sorry."

"Yeah, but ten years?!"

"Easy, ladies, easy," says Hans.

"Please, leave us alone," says Elsa, with a flustered scowl on her face.

Hans scowls too. "Elsa-"

"Relax, relax!" says Kristoff, getting up and raising his arms to cool us all down. "Look at them, Hans, they're so girly. The worst they could possibly say to each other is 'you're a stinker'."

I glare at Elsa. "...you're a stinker."

"Whoop," says Kris. "She dropped the bomb."

Elsa frowns but keeps her shoulders all straight and proper. "F-Fine," she says to me. "You win."

"You're letting me win?" I ask. My posture droops and my heart plummets. "Kristoff never lets me win."

"Oh, because you totally deserve to win," he drawls.

"Excuse you, Bjorgman."

"Alright, Annagram. I'll let you win, too." And while I know he means it in a way that's humorous, it isn't humorous. It actually makes me a little mad, and it really shows on my face.

I happen to look at Elsa again, and she notices all the anger on my face and just sort of falls apart. Her face saddens. She glances at my hand and then to hers, her breath starts quiver, her body shakes. And I know exactly what's going to happen next.

"I think I should go," she says, pushing away from the table.

"No," I reply. "Hans, get the blanket."

He pulls it out of nowhere and throws it at me and I wrap it around Elsa. She starts to rub at her elbows and shakes her head, her breath coming out in broken patterns and sharp staccatos. She breathes in through her nose, breathes out through her mouth.

"It's okay, Elsa, it's okay," I say. I look over to Kristoff and Hans. "Hey, umm... could you give us a moment to ourselves? Please?"

Kristoff nods. Hans looks at him and straightens himself like he just now realizes that he's supposed to nod too (which is weird because isn't he the one that knows what's going on?)

"W-we can wait at the back," says Hans. "Temporary closing."

"Great," I say, trying my best to stay calm. "Oh, and Kristoff?"

"Hmm?"

"Could I borrow your guitar?"

"Of course."

He leaves the guitar with me and Hans locks the front door before they go out the back.

The place settles in for utter silence, save for Elsa's quick and quiet breathing. When I make sure they're gone, I sit down next to Elsa and scoot in closer to her. I look at her, but she refuses to look at me. She's wearing the blanket around her like a cape. She's brought her knees up to her face and her hands are hidden somewhere at her middle; she's curled herself up onto the chair like a ball. I guess at this point she just kind of wants to turn into a ball.

"Elsa," I say. "I-I'm sorry about everything. I got... mad and I... I'm really sorry."

She doesn't move and for a moment wonder if she needs a paper bag, but she's actually quite still.

"I do things and I don't know why I do things because I do them before they even reach my head and I'm sorry for that, I really am." The memory of me climbing into her window that day creeps into my mind, but I bite my tongue and it goes away. "Sometimes I don't think and before I realise it, it's too late and it happens and it's all my fault. But I'll stay and I'll listen and I'll try to come to understand what this is all about and I'll be patient for you because... if I miss out on you... I'll feel like I'm missing out on the world." Her face is still buried in crossed arms. "I know this happens to you a lot and I'm sorry that it does, but... this time, I'm here for you!" I say with an overeager smile. "And... I dunno... maybe eventually it'll go away! We can fix it, I'm sure of it!"

She finally looks at me and nods, taking the deep breaths that I suggest she takes.

"Elsa, I don't know how to help you through words," I say. "Can I just..." I raise my hand up as gently as possible. "Could I just... help you in ways that I do know?"

She scrunches her eyes shut and shakes her head, and tells me in this panic-stricken voice, "Anna, no, you'll only make things worse-"

"-Elsa, trust me."

She peeks at me with one eye.

"Just trust me."

I let my hand float over her but tenses up and she hisses at me with a red face so I stop and put my hand away.

It's frustrating not being able to have physical contact with her, but I take it with patience and look on the brighter side of things. I mean, hey, she's here, she's with me, that's all I should be asking for, right?

So I wait for her to let off the heavier breaths and frustrated scowls before I try talking to her again in attempt to form an apology.

"H-hey, Elsa?" I say. "I-I'm really sorry and I-"

"No, no, no, it's okay," she says shakily, putting a stop to my words, maintaining stable eye contact with me. She looks like she's fighting an inner war. "I-it really is. I'm okay now." I let her battle with herself for a while, and watch her calming down for another minute before she says, "Thank-you for... a-all this."

We look into each other for even longer.

"So... things are... good?" I ask.

She takes a few deep breaths before responding to me. "Yes. Everything is good."

"That's... good," I say, getting lost in the sheer blueness of her eyes. I snap myself out of it and warp myself back to reality. "D-do you want to... talk? About... this?"

She snuggles into the blanket, retaining her calm, stays quiet. "How about we... I don't know... talk about each other?"

So we try to. But it doesn't really work in a way that doesn't come off as awkward because Elsa is still trying to calm herself down and I don't know how to talk with her. I try to ask her about feelings and how she felt about staying in her room for so long, but she doesn't want to talk about feelings because she doesn't know how to handle them so I suggest we talk about our interests. So Elsa asks me some questions and one of them happens to be about if I play sports, and I tell her,

"Sports are great!" And she looks happy when I talk so I keep going and say:

"But people really hate it when I'm on their team because all I do is twirl around the field and kick the ball out of boundaries when it rolls in front of me. They're usually pretty impressed with how strong I am though, because they say I look like a squishy twig."

And that makes her giggle, and I love it when she giggles because it has this sort of childlike sound to it and it's like music to my ears (I can assure you, I'm not a creep!).

After that one question about sports though, we're at a loss of words again. So Elsa says, "Okay, how about you talk about yourself?"

"Me?" I ask. Elsa could be going on and on about herself but she chooses to ask about _me_?

"Yeah you, silly," she giggles.

"Oh well, um... I'm not all that interesting. What is there to say about me? My life has been pretty dull. Nothing too special. Fell out of a tree a few times. Dyed a strand of my hair once. Almost dove off a cliff without second thought. Weird years. I even knew a woman who looked like Gwyneth Paltrow and she asked me a lot of questions for some reason."

"That's odd."

"It is! But you know, I don't think those years will matter, right? Because there are things in life that I find exciting now!"

"Exciting things?"

"Mhm!"

"Name a few."

The word comes out before I even know what I'm saying. "You."

"What?"

I blink. "Wait, what?"

"You think I'm exciting!"

"Maybe?"

"You're trying to flatter me!" she teases, a playful grin.

"What? No! It was... it was _completely _unintentional. I mean, you _do_ make things more exciting for me and _wow_ is life totally different now - in a good way! - but, whew, I-" I notice I'm fixing my hair like I do when I'm tense. "I'm making things awkward aren't I?"

"No, no, no, it's fine-"

"This is awkward, I know, I'm sorry, but I can't help it, your face, you're so pretty- I just -" I pull away. "What am I saying?" I look at Elsa, her lips curved into a grin, eyes shying away from mine. Then I notice the colour on her cheeks and I stop with the rambling.

"Elsa, are you blushing?"

"No, I'm dying from embarrassment."

"Sorry-"

"No, you're cute," she says with half-lidded eyes. Her lashes flutter rapidly and her eyes widen with something of surprise. "Is this what female bonding is always like?"

"I could get used to it."

"I think I could too."

So then Elsa fully calms down and things get less awkward, and we talk about basic things about ourselves, like our favourite colours (hers is blue), celebrities (she isn't really into that kind of stuff, but she likes Kristen Bell!), food (she refuses to eat anything that isn't sweet).

Elsa does most of the asking and not a whole lot of the answering. I figure she isn't really keen on opening herself up, so I give her a little push and ask her some questions too, like what she likes to wear, what she likes to do in her free time. Elsa tells me she likes wearing fancy coats and gloves, and has a large collection of dress shirts and shoes, but she doesn't seem to want to say anything beyond that so I respect her privacy and instead use the time to tell her more about what I like.

I tell her I love playing party games with Kristoff on the Wii, even though he always ruins it and ends up breaking something. I tell her about my fascination with _The Breakfast Club_, and my love for all things Disney, and she beams at me and goes:

"No way! You love Disney too!"

Then we start going on and on about all things Disney and somehow end up talking about the subliminal messages in some of the films (she snorts at the mention of the castle phallus in _The Little Mermaid_) and then I tell her the reason I asked for Kristoff's guitar was so that I could play a song for her.

"I'm going to play you one of my favourite songs," I say, unzipping the instrument's case and pulling out the guitar. "It's meant to be a duet." I hold it into my arms. "But I'll just sing the first part anyway."

I get my hands used to the feeling of the strings and start to play, accompanying the melodic strum with the lyrics to the song.

"_I can show you the world."_

The moment I start singing, Elsa's face turns red and she hides herself in her palms.

"_Shining, shimmering, splendid... tell me princess, now when did you last let your heart decide?_" She looks up again, but her face is even redder, and she has this really goofy grin painted on her lips. I let the words flow off my tongue, and my hands to take me through the music while my eyes study every little detail of Elsa's face; her lashes, her dimples, her brow.

I stop the song just before Princess Jasmine's part, and Elsa can't stop smiling.

"That was beautiful," she says, flattered.

"Really? It was nothing," I say.

"No, I mean it," she says, with this sort of confidence in her that I've never seen before. "It was beautiful."

Just as I'm about to say something cheesy, Hans comes in and interrupts our staring session, and Kristoff follows suit.

"Is everything alright in here?" asks Kristoff.

"Oh!" I jump, the guitar almost falling to the floor, but I catch it just in time. "W-we're more than okay!" I gush, and he laughs at how the corners of my mouth have driven my cheeks so far up my flushing face. "Everything's going so wonderfully."

Elsa smiles. "I couldn't agree more," she sighs, giving me another loving look. But it disappears when she jumps and gets up and says she has an online class that she needs to attend. So I get up and put the guitar away with slippery hands and say, "Right! Right, I should be doing school related things too, like uh... homework. Yeah. Homework."

Then we get trapped in each other's eyes again, like there's this sort of magnetism that pulls us together and Hans goes,

"Tell them to stop staring."

Kristoff snorts. "Don't interrupt their mating signals."

I snap and fling the guitar case at him, and it hits him right in the nose. "Excuse me, Bjorgman?!"

He wipes it off his face. "Stop calling me that!"

"Don't say 'mating signals, then!'"

Elsa blushes and laughs. And when she laughs, I can't help but laugh too. It's like the sound of her voice just makes things instantly better. And soon, all four of us are laughing.

The conflicting rush of emotions eventually dies down and we all part ways. Hans stays for his day shift at the coffee shop, Elsa and I stand around outside like we did yesterday, with the same smiley faces and still sore cheeks while Kristoff waits for us to exchange farewells.

I say goodbye even though I don't want to, and she goes, and I go too, because there isn't much reason left for me to stay if the four of us aren't all together.

Kristoff walks me to the park and I talk to him non-stop about Elsa the entire way there until I'm sure he's sick and tired of her because he asks me,

"Are you every going to stop talking about her?"

And I think 'no' would be the most honest answer I can give so that's what I tell him.

He scoffs in response and continues on his way to the Skytrain station.

When he leaves, I get into the park, and watch the fluffy ducks float in the clear puddles on the ground. And I start to wonder if things will always be so great. If the four of us will always be together like this. If Elsa will be always be there. If Elsa will always be around.

Because I want to always be around Elsa and the guys. And I hope they feel the same about me.

* * *

Thanks again to Karen for putting up with this itty-bitty project!


End file.
